Dr. Suzana Milevska

The Triumph of Recording and Implanting False Memories in Macedonia

During the last four years contemporary art in Macedonia is largely overshadowed by

the politically driven urban “regeneration” of public spaces largely supported by the

Macedonian Ministry of Culture and the Government of Republic of Macedonia. The

national art and cultural policy openly favor the past over present, the historic over

contemporary, the figurative and monumental over conceptual and critical, the

militant and nationalistic identitarian politics over multi-cultural and co-habitant

difference, the conservativist and neo-liberal over deliberative and democratic.

Moreover enormous incentives are given to art and artists that helped to construct a

new imaginary city of “false memorials” gathered under a common title “Skopje

2014” as a kind of 3D history text book, or theme-park (most of the public sculptures,

monuments and architectural buildings were built in the centre of country’s capital

Skopje). 1 In such adoration for the imagined antiquity past there is hardly any place

for consideration of contemporary and present, neither as a relevant topic and

content, nor as a medium or form.

Meant to become a remembrance of the collective past which, by the way, had never

existed (or at least not in this form) “Skopje 2014” became a synonym for the

ignorance and disrespect for contemporary art on the side of official culture

representatives. Starting from constructing monuments to historic personalities and

events whose relevance and/or meaning are highly problematic from contemporary

political perspective and ending with reference to some obsolete aesthetic (antiquity

evident in placing columns even on modernist and brutalist architectural façades,

baroque and neo-classicistic styles that have been directly prescripted by the open

calls for these commissions), the Government turned into a kind of chief curator, and

not only the cultural policy maker. 2 Namely there is no one single artistic or

architectural author or a team who signed this project, so it feels as if it emerged

from some nightmarish dream of the Prime Minster who even refers to the project in

his speeches as to his own project.

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By dictating the art and visual culture that unfortunately may stay around much

longer than any contemporary art work (these objects are mostly cast in bronze or

carved in marble) “Skopje 2014” testifies for the obvious officials’ disengagement

from any kind of contemporary art. The sculptures of frivoling women with bare

breasts (no women heroes, though, were given monumental representation),

baggers, bulls, fish, dancers and trees turned into human bodies are placed side by

side to the figures of historic VIP’s (mostly riding on horses), the newly built

Triumphal Arch and a Merry Go Round right in the centre of Skopje.

Even a few attempts of the artists to create works that would follow some more

relevant contemporary art practices ended into a farce because of the pompous

artist’s ambition and lack of proper critical and contextual reflection (e.g. the

sculptures of willow-trees installed in concrete blocks in the middle of river Vardar

sounded as a complete parody although or exactly because they have been

imagined as a reference to Joseph Beuys or to ecologically committed art).

In parallel to the capital investments in such problematic projects the art and cultural

institutions are deteriorating. The managerial and artistic leadership is hugely

overwritten by the ruling party’s “taste” driven by political interests and ignorance that

ends with admiration for traditional art “values” while the Museum of Contemporary

Art’s collection and its building have been neglected for years. 3 Such hypocritical

situation is stressed by the simultaneously claims of lack of funds (e.g. when it

comes to representation of the country at international contemporary art events such

1 While “false memories” is a well-known phenomenon from psycho-pathology and it refers to trauma-driven imagined events that show as real in the subject’s memory “false memorials” are newly invented practice typical for the nationalist and conservativist governments of newly emerged states. They are mostly a result of the ultimate desire of the newly established governments in the Eastern and South-Eastern Europe to distance themselves from the communist but often also from the anti-fascist past.

2 For example, the most problematic is the commission of the monument “Gemidzii” dedicated to the nationalists’ organization The Boatmen of Thessaloníki or the Assassins of Salonica, an anarchistic group active in the Ottoman Empire during the turn from 19 to 20 century. Also, the reasons to build a monument to Alexander the Great, conspicuously titled “Warrior on a Horse” are obviously political (rather than artistic or historic), taking into account the actual raw between Macedonia and Greece over the use of the name “Macedonia”.

3 Suzana Milevska, ‘Internalisation of Institutional Critique’, Evaluating and Formative Goals of Art Criticism in Recent (De)territorialized Contexts, AICA Seminar, Cultural Centre “Mala Stanica”, National Gallery, Skopje (Macedonia), AICA International Association of Art Critics, www.aica-int.org/IMG/pdf/SKOPJEcomplet.pdf

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as Venice Biennale) and unconceivable investments in public historic monuments

and in new nationalistic museums4 (the approximate budget of Skopje 2014 was 500

million of euros).

On the other side, almost no local funds are on disposal to the artists who do not

comply with the overruling and overpowering state interests that went so far to

dictate even detailed descriptions of the expected style and appearance of the public

art works and monumental sculptures commissioned via the open calls.

Still, individual artists and groups of artists produce modest works and continue their

artistic practice, although in the shade of the bronze lions, horses and bulls.

Unfortunately the art and cultural spaces financed by the state with no exemption are

strictly controlled and the only possibility to present the art productions that challenge

the professional art and cultural situation is to exhibit in spaces with no infrastructure

and curatorial or institutional support (e.g. the projects of the recent artists’ initiative

Co-operation).

Even when the artists get into the annual cultural programmes of institutions, either

by coincidence or rare exceptions, the lack of institutional and professional support

as well as non-existing continuous international collaboration prevents the visibility

and presentation of relevant and exciting art projects in the framework of important

international art events.

Suzana Milevska is a theoretician, curator and lecturer in visual culture and gender at the Institute of

Gender Studies, Skopje, Macedonia. She holds a PhD in visual culture from Goldsmiths College

London. She lectured at Alvar Aalto University Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Oxford

University, The School of Art Institute Chicago, Columbia University, IUAV Venice, Akademie der

Kunst Berlin, Moderna Museet Stockholm, TATE Modern London, KIASMA Helsinki, MUMOK Vienna,

CAMK Japan, etc. She published the book Gender Difference in the Balkans (2010). In 2012 she won

Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory and ALICE Award for political curating.

4 It is believed that the approximate budget of Skopje 2014 exceeded 500 million of euros but due to non-transparent project’s budget and impossibility of any insight in the public records related to the project, the exact amount was difficult to confirm officially.

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